Most cited article - PubMed ID 22030730
Between geometry and biology: the problem of universality of the species-area relationship
Predictions of how different facets of biodiversity decline with habitat loss are broadly needed, yet challenging. Here we provide theory and a global empirical evaluation to address this challenge. We show that extinction estimates based on endemics-area and backward species-area relationships are complementary, and the crucial difference comprises the geometry of area loss. Across three taxa on four continents, the relative loss of species, and of phylogenetic and functional diversity, is highest when habitable area disappears inward from the edge of a region, lower when it disappears from the centre outwards, and lowest when area is lost at random. In inward destruction, species loss is almost proportional to area loss, although the decline in phylogenetic and functional diversity is less severe. These trends are explained by the geometry of species ranges and the shape of phylogenetic and functional trees, which may allow baseline predictions of biodiversity decline for underexplored taxa.
Citizen science projects store an enormous amount of information about species distribution, diversity and characteristics. Researchers are now beginning to make use of this rich collection of data. However, access to these databases is not always straightforward. Apart from the largest and international projects, citizen science repositories often lack specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to connect them to the scientific environments. Thus, it is necessary to develop simple routines to allow researchers to take advantage of the information collected by smaller citizen science projects, for instance, programming specific packages to connect them to popular scientific environments (like R). Here, we present rAvis, an R-package to connect R-users with Proyecto AVIS (http://proyectoavis.com), a Spanish citizen science project with more than 82,000 bird observation records. We develop several functions to explore the database, to plot the geographic distribution of the species occurrences, and to generate personal queries to the database about species occurrences (number of individuals, distribution, etc.) and birdwatcher observations (number of species recorded by each collaborator, UTMs visited, etc.). This new R-package will allow scientists to access this database and to exploit the information generated by Spanish birdwatchers over the last 40 years.
- MeSH
- Biodiversity MeSH
- Time Factors MeSH
- Databases, Factual * MeSH
- Volunteers MeSH
- Ecology methods MeSH
- Internet MeSH
- Population Dynamics MeSH
- Programming Languages MeSH
- Birds * MeSH
- Software * MeSH
- Computational Biology methods MeSH
- Research Design MeSH
- Geography MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
- Geographicals
- Spain MeSH
Despite the broad conceptual and applied relevance of how the number of species or endemics changes with area (the species-area and endemics-area relationships (SAR and EAR)), our understanding of universality and pervasiveness of these patterns across taxa and regions has remained limited. The SAR has traditionally been approximated by a power law, but recent theories predict a triphasic SAR in logarithmic space, characterized by steeper increases in species richness at both small and large spatial scales. Here we uncover such universally upward accelerating SARs for amphibians, birds and mammals across the world’s major landmasses. Although apparently taxon-specific and continent-specific, all curves collapse into one universal function after the area is rescaled by using the mean range sizes of taxa within continents. In addition, all EARs approximately follow a power law with a slope close to 1, indicating that for most spatial scales there is roughly proportional species extinction with area loss. These patterns can be predicted by a simulation model based on the random placement of contiguous ranges within a domain. The universality of SARs and EARs after rescaling implies that both total and endemic species richness within an area, and also their rate of change with area, can be estimated by using only the knowledge of mean geographic range size in the region and mean species richness at one spatial scale.
- MeSH
- Algorithms MeSH
- Biodiversity * MeSH
- Models, Biological * MeSH
- Species Specificity MeSH
- Ecosystem * MeSH
- Extinction, Biological MeSH
- Amphibians physiology MeSH
- Birds physiology MeSH
- Mammals physiology MeSH
- Conservation of Natural Resources MeSH
- Geography * MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. MeSH
- Geographicals
- Africa MeSH
- Americas MeSH
- Asia MeSH
- Australia MeSH
- Europe MeSH
